258 REPORT— 1902. 



IRELAND. 

 Communicated hy the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. 



Investigations hito the Glacial Drifts of the North-east of Ireland, vnth 

 Special Reference to the Diatribntion of Erratics and Fossils. Conducted 

 for the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club by Madame Christen, 

 Miss Maby K. Andrews, and Mr. Robert Bell. Microscopic Exami- 

 nations conducted by Mr. Joseph Wright, F.G.S., a7id Misg Smythe, 

 The Determination of Hocks by Professor Grenville Cole, F.G.S., 

 Prof. W. W. Watts, M.A., F.G.S., Mr. A. McHenry (Geological 

 Survey), and Mr. J. St. J. Phillips. 



The following schedule has been prepared as a summary of the most 

 important results of several years' work carried on by many members of 

 the Belfast JSTaturalists' Field Club, and includes stray records from 

 localities not fully examined, which have nevertheless furnished data 

 sufficiently important to be worth recording. Fuller details will be 

 subsequently published in the club's annual proceedings. 



Erratics. — The prevalence of Ailsa Craig eurite is remarkable : it occurs 

 at twenty-six of the scheduled localities as pebbles on the sands at White- 

 park Bay, Portrush, and Portstewart, on the shores of Belfast Lough, and 

 in dredgings oflf Rathlin Island at a depth of 45 fathoms. Scottish rocks 

 have been found in several deposits, and others whose parent locality may 

 be either Scotland or Ireland. Basalts and other rocks too widely dis- 

 tributed as rocks in the district to be of value in indicating lines of ice- 

 flow have been omitted from the schedule for the sake of conciseness ; 

 nor has it been possible in these limits to include the compass direction of 

 parent rocks, which will be more easily understood by reference to the 

 map,' where the distribution of a few easily recognised erratics has 

 been indicated. The term ' loose strong drift ' is here applied to localities 

 where the contents of boulder clay cliffs have been scattered on the shore 

 by the waves of the sea, as well as to loose drift, which is dispersed over 

 headlands and mountains. No. 27 (Carronreagh Quarry) offered a solitary 

 example of a peculiar rubbly deposit of angular fragments. Shells are very 

 rarely found in the local drift, but microzoa, especially Foraminifera, are 

 widely distributed. Their occurrence in such elevated deposits as No. 3 

 (Divis Mountain) and No. 7 (Cave Hill), and their absence from such a 

 deposit as No. 32 (Killough) at sea level, is noteworthy. The boulder 

 clavs at No. 4 and No. 7 are not typical deposits, being scanty beds of 

 hard clay filled with angular fragments of chalk, flint, and basalt only. 



This invasion of the north-east of Ireland by an ice-flow from Scotland, 

 the ensuing conflict between Irish and Scottish ice, and the ultimate lines 

 of distribution over Ireland, ofier a fascinating problem barely touched 

 upon in these researches, and urgently calling for further investigations of 

 the drift deposits scattered throughout Ulster. 



' The reference is to a map which will be published bj' the Belfast Naturalists 

 Field Club. 



